How to Launch Your Local Marketing Consulting Business

In this article you will learn some great tips on getting Started as a Local Marketing Consultant that will help you avoid the pitfalls and Traps that most local internet marketers fall into when starting out.

Why did I choose to offer services to local businesses?

The best way to explain this is to tell yet another story.

My big “Why” was that I had a lot of experience in a variety of industries, which (I guess) made me overqualified for the work I wanted to do. In no particular order, I had been a Sales Consultant for a Dental technology company, a software sales rep for a publicly held company, taught at executive training seminars and done sales training. For two years I was a marketing director.

In fact, I got interested in marketing on the internet because I needed better and cheaper ways to find customers. Having a website meant that if people could find me online they could access most of the information they needed to decide whether or not to book me. It also meant fewer time consuming consultations that may or may not have resulted in business.

My first marketing client was a Dentist from my earlier days in Dental Technology Sales. Actually, I was just talking to the Dentist about how my new website was helping grow my business and he asked if I could help him do the same. So I brokered a deal with my web developer and helped write the copy. That was around 1999 and it goes to show that you don’t have to know absolutely everything to get started.

Maybe you’ve never owned a business of your own but you probably know someone who does. Think about all the businesses you patronize. Start observing what they are doing to get customers. Your first client may be right in front of you.

Starting With the End in Mind

I always encourage anyone who’s starting out as a local Internet marketer to think very carefully about the kind of business you want and exactly what that business looks like, because the more clear you are on your ideal business the more easily you can achieve those goals.

What I’m talking about here is for example: what type of consulting and business services your provide, how many employees or staff you have working for you or whether you have everything completely outsourced offshore for example and most importantly how much money you want your business to turn over in specific terms.

Designing your business is the key to smart rapid growth

Designing your local marketing business is crucial to quickly achieving the goals that you set out for yourself and one of the big mistakes that I see most local marketing start-ups make.

If you don’t design your business with clear and specific strategies, methods and goals then what you end up with is a mess in exactly the same way as if you put a whole bunch of Lego pieces together without any direction or design… Very ugly mess.

The BIG problem here is IF you don’t design the business from the ground up, you end up constantly chasing problems and plugging holes and fixing things on the fly all the time which means you can never truly remove your self from the business and work on it rather than in it.

I’m not saying that you have to get every single duck in a row and every detail down to the nth degree before you begin working the business, absolutely not. However you must be very clear about the foundations of the most crucial parts of your local marketing consulting business because this is where I see most people fail and then give up on the idea.

Foundations such as:

Marketing services you will provide

Sales systems

Client management systems

Fulfillment services

Escalation and growth

Why 96% of local marketers get it horribly wrong

Having been in the local Internet marketing business for over 15 years now I can honestly say it is disturbing to see how much misinformation and totally misleading teaching material, concepts, methods and strategies have flooded onto the market over the past 18-36 months.

On a daily basis I talk to frustrated and sometimes frantic local marketers who are going nowhere fast, unable to grow the business, land clients and build income that they believed they would be able to.

The number one reason is, most of the training and information out there on how to build a local marketing consulting business is all about tactics and the tactical approach of trying to sell services such as Google plus local, reputation management, mobile marketing websites and local SEO just to name a few.

These are all great services that can help many local businesses but focusing on these tactics and trying to sell them to local businesses is not being a TRUE local marketing consultant!

These services are all commodities and what they do is create a situation where you are just one of the crowd of thousands trying to sell businesses the services and you end up having to compete on price and charging commodity rates.

Watch this short video where I talk about the #1 Fatal Mistake most local Marketing Consultants make

The strategy of the true local marketing consultant

Now I certainly don’t want to offend anyone here by saying most local marketers are not practicing as true consultants since you might believe strongly that you are in fact a local Internet marketing consultant.

What I’m saying is the true local marketing consultant doesn’t approach a business on the basis of selling them a tactic and commodity such as local SEO or Google places or are mobile marketing sites for example.

The local marketing consultant operates like a marketing Dr. and diagnosis the situation of the local business taking into account all the most important elements of marketing and sales to see which of the most critical areas that should be addressed first and prescribing based on that rather than trying to fit a service to a business.

For example many of the businesses that we consult with while they certainly can gain benefit from local SEO strategies and Google places optimization all reputation management; the most glaringly obvious weaknesses in their marketing and sales is for example their website design and the content on that website along with sales conversion and list building strategies.

The more you consult the less you have to sell

If you really don’t like selling then you’ll love this because I for one have never really enjoyed having to sell products and services so working on this strategy makes so much sense and take so much pressure off having to make the sale all the time.

When you act as a local marketing Dr. and use the consultative sales approach of listening to clients and asking sensible strategic questions that uncover the real needs and weaknesses of the business then you completely transform your credibility and authority in the eyes of the local business owner.

People love to be listened to and the more you listen with that consultative approach the more a business owner realizes that you have their best interest in mind and not to just sell them the latest greatest product or tactic that you think will benefit them.

Keep in mind that the things I’m talking about here such as marketing funnels and list building or website content and conversion are relatively easy for you to implement in most businesses because more than 90% of them have absolutely no idea and the worst examples of online marketing that you can find anywhere, so even average Internet marketing skills are streets ahead of most local businesses.

Learning the Ropes of Local Marketing Consulting

There’s no getting around the fact that the biggest challenge that new local Internet marketers all consultants have is trying to find out how to learn the ropes of local marketing consulting the right way in the first place rather than being sent in 100 different directions and ending up totally confused and unsuccessful.

If you just go and buy the latest WSO from the warrior forum then all I can say is best of luck with that because 99 times out of 100 most people just end up going round in circles and buying one of these latest info products after another instead of crafting out a well-designed local marketing business from the ground up.

How long did it take for you to become proficient in your former job? Years? Decades? You either had formal training or you started at the bottom and worked your way up. So it’s reasonable to assume that this new direction will require some training, baby steps, and even a bit of trial and error until you discover what works best for you.

Progressive and Strategic Learning is the Key to Your Success

Think of it as learning a new language. You can go the total immersion route where the instructor points to pictures and speaks to you only in that language until a few words start to make sense. If you stick with it you will start to understand complete sentences. At some point you’ll be able to speak well enough to be understood. The more proficient you become the less time it will take your brain to translate words and thoughts into words.

If you want to avoid learning the hard way, running around in circles and chasing your tail then STOP buying more stuff and let us show you the right way to do this.

Learning from seasoned recognized experts

We’ve put together a free training program to help people get started the right way and Local Marketing Consulting by focusing on the most important parts of the business that will set you up for success and have the biggest impact on your growth rate.

We also do a very limited number of 1-on-1 mapping sessions with Local Marketing Consultants and Agencies to help you get unstuck and learn the exact steps you need to double or triple your consulting business growth.

You can get on my Calendar HERE to book in a FREE Mapping session and get crystal clear on your next steps!